


Hierarchy

by ninehundredthousandfinalwords



Category: Original Work
Genre: 2019 Kyoto Attacks (Fictional), Anti-Terrorism Group, Bombing, Child Death, Death, Fires, Implied/Referenced Terrorism, Major Character Injury, Multi, Near Death, Original Character(s), Rushing Water (Place), SML Shopping Centre (Kyoto), Strangers to Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2020-06-24 07:26:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19718983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninehundredthousandfinalwords/pseuds/ninehundredthousandfinalwords
Summary: Alone in a Kyoto apartment, one lonely girl wonders about her life, and the choices she made to get there. Whether childhood friends bonding over a love society deems unacceptable, a gentle suicidal past, or an awkward half-siblingship that doesn't provide anything but grief for her, Mai may soon learn that making excuses for people you've loved all your life won't bring her the joy she so desperately desires.





	1. Nel primo atto

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> I decided to try my hand at creating an original work. This is cross-posted on FictionPress, under the same username and title. The summary is different, though.  
> I think I embodied the spirit of high school girls struggling with emotions well enough, but I wouldn't know, would I?

I never really noticed how many speeches adults gave about loving yourself and how popularity didn’t exist. Elementary school Mai believed them with all my heart and soul. Now that I’m older, I realize how absolutely stupid they were. Actually, they were right to a certain degree. Popularity was a thing of the past. Today’s society is a goddamn hierarchy.

I guess our school is a good example of today’s society, then. People get pushed to the top or bottom of that hierarchy without even wishing for it. Then again, some do. Maybe they bully others into being their friends, like a girl named Arielle in middle school. Or they’re just so nice that they somehow end up there. Like Sheri, one of Arielle’s friends. She deserved to be there. Then there are the ones who are popular because they’re witty, funny, sarcastic, and come with a healthy dose of embellishment. Case and point, Daria, who despite being quite literally the shortest person in the school still managed to take names and kick ass.

Most kids end up somewhere in the middle. Quiet. Reserved. Judged because they didn’t tune in to New York Fashion Week and instead opted to look at Eurovision memes on the Internet and jam out to Evanescence and anime soundtracks. The people who lived off Tumblr and Archive of Our Own. Who liked things like Naruto and Voltron and Yuri! on Ice.

I know what it’s like. I’m one of them. Used to be. Still am. I’m not sure, actually.

In the halls of Leslie Downer Institution for Gifted Individuals, well, the Japan division, Mika Kurosuki was the unwilling queen. Undeniably, she was the goddess we all worshipped, though the goddess who did not want to be worshipped. The kind who turned away friendship at every opportunity because she was scared they would abandon her in a heartbeat. She’s just. There. She doesn’t like it. It gets on her nerve. Everyone can tell. But she’s so entrancing we can’t help it. She hardly has any true acquaintances-don’t even think about friends!

There’s a certain magic that came with being friends with Mika Kurosuki. For one, she was incredibly beautiful, and quiet, and as such, mysterious. If you hung out with her, you’d passed an unspoken test: whether or not she could bear being around you. If she ditched you after a week, her sympathetic group of rejected friends would welcome you into their ranks. She only had two real friends. Three, now.

Haruka Hiyamizu, a tall, lanky girl with short, fiery red hair that she insisted was natural, although it was bordering on the color of blood and would get brighter every week. She always wore a grey cravat around her neck, but it’d gone the slightest bit brown after a particularly bad day at softball involving a lot of mud. She wore it anyway. Apparently, she really likes American food.

Rinka Shuichi, who seemed to really enjoy painting her nails. She’d come to school every day with different types of nail art. Makes me question the laws of physics every time she runs her hands through those ginger curls of hers. Her nails never chip. It’s terrifying. Once, she had a middle finger painted in a neon colour on every nail. She got a detention, but didn’t go. At least, that’s what all the students said. She never told me, and I never bothered to ask.

And then there’s me. Mai Kuromi. I’m Mika’s half-sister, with the same father but different mothers, although, somewhat ironically, I’d never talked to her before last month, when we were paired up for a science project. She’d made her way over to my desk with her usual deadpan expression and immediately started working. I’d quietly told her what I wanted to do and she nodded. Two days later she emailed me her half of the project, complete with pictures, hand-drawn illustrations, and detailed diagrams. I added that to my work and handed it in. We got an A.

A week before Christmas Eve, my father had declared that tensions were too great, he didn’t care how much our mothers hated each other, we were having dinner together. He turned into a holiday whirlwind, hiring personal chefs, booking flights for our family in Japan, Googling Christmas decoration hacks. We ended up with what looked like a snowman’s barf bucket.

Our families had met up at our father’s house, Mom, my old stepmother Aiko, his current wife (I think her name is Kelly, she’s American) and Mika’s mom, glaring at each other and nursing tall glasses of strong wine. It was pretty scary. Four strong-willed women staring each other down.

Awkward, I’d retreated to my room, and found that the second bed I had always thought was unused housed one Kurosuki Mika. She’d looked up, startled like a deer in headlights, then nodded, schooled her face into a neutral expression, and gone back to whatever she was doing. We traded noted later on, quietly, then copied the parts the other had missed. It was our little compromise. We could go to each other for some solace, silence, a little bit of calm from the storm. I was like a breath of fresh air to her, and she was like a heady rush of freedom for me. We were not bound by any homework, or hectic schedules when we sat beside each other, typing gently on our keyboards, listening to music, sketching, or scrolling through social media. Then again, I rarely have time to do things like this.

Mika is…different. People view her as strange, or weird. She’s not. She’s quiet, but that doesn’t make her some kind of freak. She’s like a waterfall. Beautiful, entrancing, but deadly. If you hung out with her, you were instantly some sort of untouchable god. Too pure for society’s soiled fingers to graze. So angelic and perfect people were too intimidated to even think about tainting your gorgeous visage with their disgusting commoner presences.

Little did they know, huh?

Rinka and Haruka met a couple years ago, in middle school. Rinka’s much louder than Haruka, who’s rather reserved and shy. They’re together. A couple. Girlfriends. It kind of makes me sick, how every time they smile a sappy smile at each other I feel the urge to sock one of them in the face. I don’t know if I’m jealous or something. I like to think that I’m jealous. If I’m jealous, then I’m not just an asshole. I’m still an asshole. But like a nice asshole who’s not jealous that her friends are together and she’s still single. That’s who I want to be.

Actually I want to be a nice asshole who _is_ jealous that her friends are together and she’s still single.

But Rinka’s a nice change of pace, and Haruka’s sort of like Mika in the sense that I’ll go to her if I need some peace.

Once, I drank an entire bottle of soy sauce on a dare in fifth grade. I ended up in the hospital. Haruka came by with some well wishes from our class. I punched her in the face. At the time, she was just another reminder of my stupidity, my desperation to appeal to my classmates. I couldn’t bear it. I apologized when we became friends. She said it was so long ago she didn’t even remember it. Liar. I shattered the bones and scattered the cartilage in her nose. She was in the hospital for a month and a half. She remembers.

Mika, Haruka, Rinka, and I are sitting down for lunch right now. Even the way she chews is delicate, dainty, ladylike. Rinka munches away on a sandwich, bread and meat and lettuce disappearing into her mouth at an alarming rate. Haruka is trying to get her to slow down. Her own steak and mashed potatoes are abandoned. All is normal.

But then, something weird happens.

A bouncy girl with white-blonde hair in a bouncy high ponytail bounces her bouncy way over to our table. She’s holding a salad. Her friends are frantically gesturing at her to come back. She sets her salad down and sits next to me. I freeze. Haruka freezes. Rinka freezes. Mika freezes. The entire damn school freezes.

“Hi!” she chirps. “I’m Cindy! Can I sit here?”

Mika regards her with a careful eye. She trails her gaze down past her million-watt smile and her pink clothes. She locks eyes with me and jerks her head ever so slightly in Cindy’s direction. I sigh and turn to face her. It’s my “initiation ceremony” of sorts. It’s not official. I have to turn away at least one person from the friend group. One person that Mika deems unworthy.

“Sorry, Cindy. But this table is reserved for someone else.” I smile softly, hoping she buys the fake act. She doesn’t. She’s smarter than she looks. Her eyes narrow and she looks at each of us, all with fake-ass doll grins. Then at her friends, who look mortified. Then at the silent cafeteria. Her hands come up and tears spill over her eyes. I reel back, surprised. I didn’t expect her to start crying. She looks to Rinka, Haruka, Mika for help. None of them say anything. She runs back to her table and her friends immediately move away. She looks even more lost and lonely sitting by herself, eating her salad sadly.

I felt bad for her before. Now she’s just causing a scene. Mika looks frustrated with herself, muttering under her breath and scribbling frantically in a notebook that appears out of nowhere. The peaceful mood we had before is gone. I can’t help but resent Cindy a little bit for that.

* * *

Honestly, I didn’t know what I had expected when I came all the way to Osaka just to visit Haruka. It was winter break, and had been a month since the Cindy Incident. Haruka’d called me last night in a fit of tears, crying about how her parents had left her again to go to Sapporo and that Mika and Rinka were both on vacation. She asked me to pay her a visit. Alone in an empty apartment back in Kyoto, I couldn’t say no. So I’d hopped on the last train, the ten sixteen bullet and sat for an hour and seven minutes alone, pondering why I was there.

The answer was easy. Haruka.

So why am I still asking myself the same question, at six am, rubbing her back in gentle circles as she throws up the remains of her dinner into an innocent toilet bowl, after trying and failing to spin in circles continuously for three minutes because of an Internet dare?

Oh. That’s another easy answer.

Because I suck.

She shakily stands up and sends a wobbly smile my way. “Sorry.” she says. I’d like to be mad at her for making me wake up at five thirty to time her spinning, but how can I when she’s being so earnest? So instead I sigh, pull her to her room, and plop down on the couch.

“Good night.”

She giggled. “It’s morning, silly.”

“Good. Night. Haruka.”

She laughs again. “Good night, Mai.”

Of course the universe decides not to let me get a wink of sleep after that.


	2. Il secondo atto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who was I, before I was me? Before my mother was pregnant, before my father ever met her, before she was born. Who was I? Was I someone different, or did I not exist?  
> Osaka in the winter is beautiful.

By the time Haruka trudges out of her room in pink unicorn pajamas I’m sure are from eighth grade, I have a stack of pancakes waiting for her. She gives me a sleepy grin, sits down and digs in. I slide a couple of eggs onto a piece of avocado toast and place a slice of ham on top. Haruka wrinkles her nose at the jar of homemade kale jam on the counter and gags around her pancakes. I roll my eyes. I swear that girl lives off smoothies, sour peach rings and Pringles.

“Hey, Haru, have you talked to Mika lately? She’s in Switzerland, right?”

She looks up from her sugary plate. “No. I thought you’d have done that, seeing as you are… related.”

I shrug. “She’s going with her mom. Who also hates me and my mom. You think she’d tell me anything under the threat of that woman?”

Haruka giggles, a high, tinkling sound. “No, not really.” She shoves a spoonful of whipped cream, strawberries, and pancake into her mouth. “These are great, by the way, can I have the recipe?”

I toss the empty can of whipped cream at her head and she bats it away onto the floor, still laughing. “No, I won’t give you anything that even roughly links to the kitchen and cooking because you will burn your house down. Jesus, Haru.”

She pulls out her phone, muttering something about drama queens and scrolls down her feed, commenting left and right. For a while, I munch on my toast and she attacks the plate of pancakes.

By the time I’m done, she’s already putting the plates in the sink and turning on the tap. I get up and slide my computer open from where it perches precariously off the side of the worn royal blue armchair after watching thirteen episodes of Voltron last night. Haruka slides into the seat beside me as I open Netflix and connect my AirPods. I offer one to her, but she smiles and waves it away as colors start flashing onscreen and noise floods my ears.

We sit there in silence for a while, watching as Keith and Lance argue over something and big robots shoot lots of lasers until she gets up and wanders off into the pantry, presumably to get something. Her phone belts out a chirp just as the door closes behind her, so I reach over and flick it open.

**MIKA** **😊😊😊**

_Hey Haru, how are you doing? Mai is at your apartment, right?_

I frown. How could she have known that I’m visiting, since Haru allegedly hadn’t spoken with her? Huh. I don’t want to reply, so I shut it off and toss it back on the table just as she emerges from the pantry covered in Flaming Hot Cheetos, Doritos, marshmallow fluff, yogurt-covered-pretzels, and movie popcorn. I sigh and turn back to the screen. Lots more lasers. Wow, that’s a lot of lasers.

I watch Haruka subtly from out of the corner of my eye as she starts flicking the pastel pink case on and off. Finally, she checks her texts and taps out a reply. I decide to speak up.

“Hey, Haru, can you grab a bag of apple chips for me?”

She rolls her eyes and mutters something like “health nut” before standing up and rummaging around in the cabinet. I don’t know why she still has snacks like that if she doesn’t eat them, but who am I to judge? I keep dried salmon skin in my kitchen just for whenever Rinka comes over.

While she’s looking for chips, I sneak a look at the notifications coming in.

**ME:** _Yeah, she is. Want me to say hi?_

**MIKA** **😊😊😊** **:**

_Sure. Tell her that my mom is in a terrible mood, so she won’t let me go study with her when we get back._

**ME:** _I will! Bye!_

I look back at Netflix just as Haru arrives at the armchair, carrying a one-pound bag of dried apple chips. She reaches in and starts nibbling on a particularly small piece.

It’s almost scary, how serene our interactions are for the next hour and a half. She eats Cheetos and dips pretzels in fluffy white goo, and I crunch on small pieces of apple and watch the world go by out of the floor-length window to my left. The season ends and she stretches, getting up and heading to put her half-eaten bag of neon spicy cheese sticks back in the pantry. I switch to an essay I’m writing for extra credit on the behaviors of women across the world after the #MeToo movement and readjust the angle of the armchair so I’m directly staring out at Osaka. If I squint, I can just make out the faint outline of Isshin-ji against the ice blue sky. There are no sakura blossoms currently of year, but the thin dusting of snow that settles over the city like a blanket is every bit as beautiful. I can almost remember the gorgeous view of Mt. Fuji from our dorm room window back in Tokyo on a warm spring day.

Gentle lo-fi music flows through my AirPods. I start typing, belting out statistics and quotes. I know this topic like the back of my hand. I’ve been writing about female empowerment since I knew what it was. It’s easy. Schoolwork comes to me naturally. Compared to problems other people were having in the world, it almost feels like I shouldn’t complain about something as insignificant as a couple of math problems or a tricky science formula.

All is normal in my life. I cycle through the rest of my day like a robot on autopilot, lost in thought. I catch a few worried glances from Haru, but they mean nothing to me. By six pm, I’m packed and ready to head to the station. She watches me from the door of her apartment. Vaguely, I remember that New Year’s is in two days. I don’t know if I should buy my parents a present or not. I look out from the balcony. The sky is a brilliant shade of gorgeous pinks and oranges fading into saturated crimsons, violets, and an indigo blue. I bid Haru goodbye and start walking.

The sky looked just like this, for Obon two years ago. My mother made me put on a kimono when we went to pray. I stood on the balcony of my apartment, a balcony just like Haru’s, and made offensive, rude jokes about ancestors and smelly ghosts with Sota. I never cared for Obon.

I can’t recall anything from a past life that wasn’t mine. Maybe I was a strict, professional lawyer, with straight chestnut hair always pulled back into a bun and the same black blazer for every meeting? Or a spirited, wild dance instructor with a bushy blonde head and a different color scheme for every day?

Maybe I was just me. Kuromi Mai with a different name. Watanabe? Sakamoto? Tachibana? Kendou?

Kurosuki?

Osaka is beautiful at dusk. Everything is bathed in a warm golden glow. Everything is perfect.

Everything except me.


	3. Intermission: Rest Period

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Looking out at Kyoto at night, everything is lit up. There’s less noise than the daytime, but the land of the rising sun never sleeps.

I’m home.

I drop my purse on the floor, tossing my duffel bag to the side and collapse on the couch. It’s 7:38. Would the local Kinka Izakaya still be open? I was really craving some _good_ yakitori, but I knew they closed early.

I grab a blanket hanging off the side of the armrest and drape it over my shoulders. There’s a bag of okra chips on the coffee table, unopened from last night. I claw at the shiny green packaging until the aroma of dried vegetable fills the air. I wrinkle my nose. I don’t like okra, but it’s healthy, right?

I crunch on the disgusting things for a bit, looking through Twitter. Some politicians are arguing over education for young women. Celebrities join in, hurling insults. It’s a complete madhouse, like usual. I don’t want to have anything to do with it, and it’s not like my opinion is needed in something like this.

Beside me, a blaring of the Matrix theme is enough to clear away any remaining haziness and I pick up my phone. Haruka is calling me. I swipe the green side of the screen and her profile picture; an image of a Chinese movie character pops up. I sigh. It’s her latest fling, and she never stops talking about it.

“Haru? What’s up?

“Hey, Mai! Did you get home safe? It’s a long way from Osaka to Kyoto, sorry for making you take care of me!” I can almost taste the nervous energy in her words. Why? She has no reason to be scared. Unless…

“Yeah, I got home safe. No worries, what are friends for, right?”

“Yeah! Hee-hee…” She sounds relieved. So she _was_ worried. Why? And about me, too?

“Well, if that’s all, then good night. I’ll see you soon for school, ‘kay? Call you tomorrow.”

“O-okay!” Her shrill, high-pitched reply makes me wince. Haruka’s voice is kind of shrieky, and the speed and volume with which she does everything instantly tires me out. I hang up and slowly open my mouth for another piece of okra. An article pops up about the very same movie character Haruka likes, and I figure I might as well watch the movie. If she loves it so much, surely it can’t be bad, right?

I download it online, puzzling out the pinyin and then translating to Japanese. Finding a version with appropriate subtitles is hard, but I manage. I settle back, adjusting my blanket and hit the play button. It’s about a myth in Ancient China from the Journey to the West. It’s really popular right now. In China, just the merchandise alone is worth two thousand yuan a set, which is how many yen I don’t know and I don’t particularly care.

(A/N: Bonus if you can guess which movie! Hint: it’s about a fire demon who looks vaguely like a girl)

By the time the movie ends, it’s nine forty-five and I’m getting a little bit sleepy. I get up and trudge to my room, sliding the door back into position behind me. The _tatami_ flooring has give, flexing just the slightest bit beneath my feet as I kneel and start going through the mail from the past two weeks. It’s become a steadily growing pile in the corner of the bedroom and I’ve got to sort it soon or else it’ll take over the entire floor. A white package from _Vexlan_ , a jewelry company with whom I have a membership, unveils a pretty blue _furoshiki_ encompassing a small silver choker necklace with chips of vibrant blue crystal. The tag places the value at seventy American dollars, which means I’ve used up all of my points and then some. I’ll have to pay them back two thousand yen at some point, but it’s not that big of a deal.

A postcard from my vacationing mother, bills (I’ll have to pay those), a letter from my father asking how I’ve been, an ad from a candidate asking me to vote for him during the board elections of the National Tea Association. I didn’t even know that existed. It might be a joke, though. Another package from a company, although it’s from an international clean water advocation program thanking me for subscribing to their digital newsletter. As a welcome gift, there’s a red box with a brochure explaining their latest fundraisers and events, a small package of blue erasers with their motto in looping gold cursive letters, a pen with a removable top and color-changing ink, and a mug with their logo. I put the erasers aside and click open the pen, scribbling a quick doodle on the back of my hand to test the quality. It’s pretty good. The Harry Potter lightning-bolt-shaped scar I’d drawn fades gently from a deep indigo to a light royal blue to aquamarine and finally a brilliant emerald, giving it the illusion of waves crashing against the peach of my skin. I really like it.

I place the pen in the mug and get up to put it on my desk, carefully excavating a handful of pens and pencils from my six cramped cups and baskets and dumping them into the wide-lipped mug. Then I peel off a green sticky note from the stack resting gently against the wall and pluck a black ballpoint from a white cup with black circles on it. I carefully write down the names of all the different types of pens in the mug and stick it onto the handle. I scan the miniscule handwriting, spot a crooked _e_ in _Green Metallic Ballpoint_ , and correct it with a meticulous swipe. Returning the pen to its cup, I stand up and start throwing away junk mail and putting important pieces in a black plastic filing bin mounted on the wall. I put the postcard and letter on the smooth surface of my desk and find some fancy stationary and letter paper to reply and start on my best _kanji_. My parents like it if I put _hiragana_ , _romanji_ and English translations underneath. I have no idea why. It’s pointless, and a waste of paper. But regardless, after my first line, I skip three more and continue writing in English.

_Dear mother,_

_I hope you are doing alright in Sicily. Father says hello from Sapporo, I should think. I have finished that essay on Chernobyl. The stocks seem interesting back in Japan._

_I will have a box of chocolates ready for you when you get back._

_Love,_

_Mai._

I set my fountain pen down and frown at the sea foam green-tinted paper, with ivory and viridian swirling up the sides in fern-like patterns. It’s pretty paper, but the words written on it seem fake, awkward and too formal. The _Love_ at the end sounds forced. Who writes about the stock market in a letter to a parent they hadn’t seen in over two weeks?

Whatever. It’s good enough. She has to know I’m trying.

I shove it aside and pull down another sheet for my dad. I write a similar message, scrawling sentences about how I’ve been having fun at Haruka’s house. I shove them into matching envelopes, seal with a small green sticker, and put them into a separate box for mail that I have to send. I dig out a sharp letter opener from my desk drawer and start shelling school newsletters like crazy, scanning each one briefly before moving on and pinning the sheets to a corkboard. When I’ve gone through all the school mail, I turn on the less important work-related mail like a hungry animal, tearing and checking and tearing and checking.

I yawn. My eyes can hardly stay open, although I know I won’t ever be able to properly sleep. I put away the last pieces of mail and polish the letter opener, putting it, the rag and the polish back into the drawer. There’s a bottle of 15mg of melatonin on the counter. I take one and swallow it whole, despite knowing it won’t do anything. I’m too far down this path of insomnia and coffee to turn back now.

I look outside, then at the clock. It’s ten forty-five. I stand, step into the bathroom, and start washing up for the night. The shower water is pleasantly warm, and the steamy state of the bathroom helps the sauna vibe. I wrap a robe around myself and go to dry my hair, brushing my hair and teeth at the same time. Then I sneak a look at the bath. Oh, whatever. I’m already wet anyway.

I smell the fresh air through my window while the bath fills itself with hot water. There’s a bath bomb in a small yellow box next to the windowsill, as a gift from Rinka for my birthday last year. I haven’t gotten to try it. I empty a small bottle of bubble bath into the water as well as the bath bomb, turning the previously blue surface a deep purple color. The ink on the back of my hand is gone. I guess it’s water-soluble. Shame, I quite liked the colors of that pen, and I have been rather interested in body art lately. Maybe I’ll try something. The label did say it was non-toxic and skin-safe.

I untie the robe and slip into the bath naked, letting my hair float around in the water. When I surface, I brush soapy suds from my eyes and splash myself in the face. Looking out at Kyoto at night, everything is lit up. There’s less noise than the daytime, but the land of the rising sun never sleeps. It’s like this in Tokyo too, except you can look straight out of our dorm window and gaze upon at billboards and skyscrapers grazing the Shibuya skyline. If you squint, there’s a hint of the tall, bright orange cranes down a couple kilometers where they’re building the venues for Tokyo 2020. Sota and I used to walk down that line of white borders, gazing with sparkling eyes at the white tips of the Olympic Village just starting to peek through the haze of clouds.

Kyoto is just as beautiful. The lights of the news center for Sakura TV shine through, the screen showing a looping video of a five-petaled pink flower unfurling and furling over and over again. The enormous SML Akihabara-style anime maid café advertises Boku no Hero Academia pasta and Kuroko no Basuke cupcakes beside SML itself, rising into the Kyoto sky like the king of all shopping centers. I go there often, to buy clothes, stationary and other school things.

There’s a string of lights shimmering down the main shopping street, strung up on trees and bushes. A troupe of carolers sing belated Christmas carols. The Santa, Rudolph and elf decorations are still up. The SML sign in covered in red, white and green like the Italian flag threw up on it. One of the carolers reaches into her large red bag and starts pulling out candy canes, handing them out to passing children. Another produces caramels and toffees, and a third whips out an assortment of fudge, peppermints, and chocolate coins wrapped in colorful pieces of shiny foil. The candy wrappers glimmer in the tinted light the street lamps are giving off. In a short thirty minutes, all of this will be dark, carolers nowhere in sight, children rushed off to a late bedtime, parents coming home from the night shift. Eleven thirty is the magic number when SML closes its eyes and goes to sleep. When this magical, romantic late Christmas is finally whisked off to bed for another day.

Eleven thirty is when the doorbell rings, and the Kyoto skyline lights up with red, orange and yellow like a cruel Christmas candelabra.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of a longer chapter. I wasn't really satisfied with the beginning, but the end sounds decently Hierarchy-ish to me.  
> Next chapter's preview:
> 
> "Why? Why the hell would you do that? Don't you know what could have happened?"
> 
> "Who are you? What do you want from me?!"  
> "I want a lot of things from you, Mai. Your pain is not one of them. Relax. I can't do this properly if you don't."


	4. Refreshments and Confusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who is Sakamoto Akitoshi?  
> More importantly, why does that excruciating look in his eyes make me want to cry?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapter in two days? I'm such a treat uwu owo

I jolt awake suddenly with a gasp, earning myself a mouthful of soapy water. Heaving for breath, I wipe my face down and pull the plug on the drain. The giant digital clock on top of Sakura TV Tower says 11:19. From out the window, SML is starting to shut its lights. The carolers have left. There are no more children on the street. It’s too late for anyone except for drunks, muggers, unlucky policemen, delinquents, and the occasional vigilante. Falling asleep in the bath was kind of unusual for me. I don’t fall asleep at night, mostly. I kind of regret waking up, even though I know I could have hit my head and drowned. I climb out of the bath and rinse the suds off of my skin with a gentle spray of the showerhead, then dry my hair quickly, wrap a towel around myself, and head out into the main bedroom, where a blast of cooler but not cold air hits me in the face. I let the towel fall around my feet and dig out some clothes from the organized mess that is my closet, finding a comfortable sweater and a pair of shorts. My hair thrown into a messy bun, I grab my laptop and jump into bed, pulling the warm covers over myself.

11:29. My eyelids are heavy, although I know I won’t sleep. The clock is ticking, although I don’t yet know how precious every second in this normal life is.

Five seconds.

Three.

One second.

The doorbell rings and simultaneously a hundred thousand explosions cut through the silent night.

I bolt upright and leap out of my bed, running to the window. My laptop has just opened and is starting to wake from sleep. I crank the shade up. Outside, what was once a beautiful Kyoto at night is now ablaze, crimson flames curling like a sleepy cat and smoke rising lazily into the dark sky. The doorbell rings again, although I hardly care.

Boom. Another few explosions. All of a sudden, they stop and it’s just fire and blood. I can hear emergency vehicles being deployed, sirens shrill in the cold winter air and people screaming, tiny flecks from the fourteenth floor of my building.

Remembering the doorbell, I stumble out of the room just in time for the door to wobble on its hinges and crash open, the lock falling apart into a silver heap of metal. Outside stands the strangest looking boy I’ve ever seen. With amethyst eyes and long white hair gathered into a ponytail, I’m almost ready to label him the _Weird Time Traveling Scribe From Edo Who Fell Into An Anime Game And Ended Up In The Real World_. He pushes his way into my apartment without introducing himself and shuts the door behind him. I’m so shocked I can’t move for a second. Then my brain comes back alive and I open my mouth.

"Who are you? What do you want from me?!"  
"I want a lot of things from you, Mai. Your pain is not one of them. Relax. I can't do this properly if you don't." He speaks with a light European accent, a lilt to the Japanese words. He says _relax_ in English, as if that’ll save anything.

“What are you doing? How do you know my name?”

He turns to me with an annoyed look and waves his hand in a random gesture that could mean anything from _I like grapes_ to _Vacuum cleaners are loud,_ then returns to fiddling with something in his hand. I keep shrieking questions at him, beyond confused, scared, and about three hundred percent _done with today._

Finally, I slap whatever he's holding onto the floor, fed up with not getting my answers. He looks at me with an angry glint in his eye. “Why? Why the hell did you do that? Don't you know what could have happened?"

I shake my head, feeling indignant. How should I know? He literally didn't give me anything that could let me know 'what could have happened', and I tell him so.

He throws his arms up. "Fine! I’ll tell you! But you have to promise to shut up and not call the police!”

I cross my arms, wondering why I haven’t done that already. Oh yeah, it’s because _they’re all away dealing with the fact that half the fucking city is on fire._ “So? Fess up, and then get out of my apartment! Also, what in the hell is that thing on the floor and what does it do?!”

He sighs. “My name is Sakamoto Akitoshi, and I’m part of an anti-terrorism group called Rushing Water. The explosions are an attack. They’re not natural. It’s terrorism. I’m in your apartment because we need your input on something. That thing that _you_ slapped out of my hands, thank you very much, is not just a _thing_ , it is a telecommunications device I’m using to tell my superiors that I got here safely, and I’ll use it again to tell them when we get out of here safely.”

“We? What do you mean by we? I’m not going with you to Rushing Waves or whatever it is. You can damn well ask me your questions and get out of my apartment! Like I have said! Two times!”

He sighs again, then picks up the communicator, a heavy stress reflected in his slow movements, and I almost feel bad for yelling. Almost.

“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come with me to Rushing Water for my superior to ask you the questions. If I can’t convince you to leave, maybe she can. You’ll be seeing her soon. I ask that the next time we meet, you keep your mouth shut. God knows it’ll make this at least a little bit easier.”

I start to say something, but his hand is suddenly on my shoulder and his body is flush with mine, warm breath tickling my ear.

“Good luck. You’ll need it.” His accent is gone, leaving only dark, terrifying words hanging in the air.

Then he pulls away with a swish of his long, heavy black trench coat and makes his way to the door, pulling it open. Just before he leaves, he turns his head. I see mountains and flowers and long, rapid river currents in those agonized violet eyes.

His lips form sentences I cannot understand, in some strange, beautiful language. I recognize one word. _Noras_. It means desire in Lithuanian.

He laughs lowly, a deep, painful sound. _“Atsisveikinimas, mano saldus vasaros gėlė, aš tave pamatys, kai Mėnulis yra didelis dangus.”_ The words sound sad, like a verse in a poem, but also like a song, flowing into something I can but can’t comprehend.

Then he’s gone, the door closing gently behind him, leaving me to frantically pull up Google Translate. I hadn’t caught the first string of words, but I had memorized the second. I had memorized his laugh, every pull of his skin, the rueful, exasperated curve of his lips. I memorized the look on his face and I stored it away for later.

_Goodbye, sweet summer flower, moon high sky I meet you._

Obviously, that makes no sense, but Mika studies Lithuanian as a hobby, so I send a link to her asking what it means. She doesn’t reply. Outside, a shrill scream snaps me out of my stupor. That’s right. The fires. I can’t be hung up over a random stranger.

Right?

Who is Sakamoto Akitoshi?

More importantly, why does that excruciating look in his eyes make me want to cry?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter preview:


	5. Encore: Anger and Pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How could a farewell message be wrong? Could online translators be incorrect enough to misinterpret the entire meaning of the phrase? And why to me? What did Mika know? What did Sakamoto know? It was all one big jumbling mess of confusion to me, and I had no idea how to cope with it.

When school starts again, no one can look me properly in the eye. It’s all, “look, there’s the girl who lives in Kyoto” or “look, it’s Mika Kurosuki’s friend who lives in Kyoto”. There’s never a “oh look, Kuromi Mai is back, let’s say hi and ask her if she’s okay after what happened in Kyoto.” Truth be told, there’s plenty of people in the academy who live in Kyoto, some even directly impacted by the fires. But none of them really matter, I do, because I’m the girl who’s half-sisters with Mika Kurosuki.

I haven’t told anyone about what happened with Sakamoto Akitoshi. I don’t exactly think anyone would believe me, even with my Mikadvantage/Mikadisadvantage, if I said “hey so over the break during the fires some random dude broke into my apartment, asked me to go back to his anti-terrorism group with him to answer questions, told me the fires that killed a bunch of people literally fifty meters from my apartment was a planned terrorist attack and then left after spitting a bunch of Lithuanian in my face, but what did you do” to them.

It keeps me up at night. Well, that’s not unusual, but I mean I sleep even worse than before. I could usually get in at least ten minutes, then nap sporadically throughout the day. But now I can’t sleep at all. It’s been three days on just coffee, and I think I actually might have a stroke if this keeps on. But I have to stay awake at least most of the time, for school, homework, and sports practices. No amount of concealer can hide the permanent panda circles under my eyes, and they’re so dark they literally sag like a pair of knock-off Jimmy Choo’s after a bad night of burritos and cheap shots at a random nightclub.

There’s a new black dress in my wardrobe, from my cousin-in-law Tatsuya’s funeral last week. He died in the fires, trapped alone under rubble, slowly asphyxiating. I stood there, looking at the tall white marble walls of the funeral venue, unsure how to act with black lace draped over my shoulders, as family sobbed their eyes out all around me. It had been a beautiful day, bright blue skies, not a cloud to be seen. I wondered if this was cosmic karma, a perfectly gorgeous day of mourning, for the way Tatsuya had joked about everything, including how strange the weather was when he came to visit and that the gods must be afraid of him, for his beauty was too great. I always laughed along with everyone else. And now he’s dead.

When I got back to my dorm room after the first day of school, the communications device Sakamoto had was on the kitchen table. He, or at least someone from Rushing Water, had been here as well. I left the device there, told my roommates it was a security camera. I wonder when his “superior” is going to come to see me. I wonder if it’s someone else my age. People so young investing in a cause so serious. I wonder who she is. I wonder what brought her to start an organization like this. I wonder what happened to Sakamoto to make him believe in her.

I asked Mika what the Lithuanian phrase meant. She didn’t answer, just stared into the distance. When she finally spoke again, she looked me in the eye and said “You don’t need to think about it. Just know that someone has done something very wrong, and that they’ll be punished for it.” When I inquired what she meant, she stayed silent. I didn’t push.

How could a farewell message be wrong? Could online translators be incorrect enough to misinterpret the entire meaning of the phrase? And why to me? What did Mika know? What did Sakamoto know? It was all one big jumbling mess of confusion to me, and I had no idea how to cope with it. So I tried my old way. Workout.

Right now I’m at the gym, on the treadmill, sweat running down my back. My hair is plastered to my face. My lungs are screaming. My chest hurts. My legs can hardly move. But I keep going, a speed of 12, like I have been for the past half an hour. In another five minutes, I will turn the power on the treadmill down, shuck off my clothes, and jump into the pool, where I will do ascending four hundreds and then two-breath freestyle fifties until I can’t think, can’t feel anything but blue, blue freedom. I’m not the fastest swimmer, at least compared to some people my age. But I like the water, and I feel most at home in a pool.

My ponytail falls into my face. I push it away. My feet pound heavily down on the treadmill. Finally, a torturous five minutes has passed and I step off. The pool is so enticing from here.

When I finally slip into that cool bliss, I’m not alone anymore.

_

Akitoshi

She’s entrancing.

Of course, I’m not the only one watching her. There’s an entire squad of Waves with me, honing the cameras, adjusting their angles, holding binoculars to our faces from the roof of a nearby building across the street from the gym she’s in. A gym that happens to have glass walls.

“Hey, Sakamoto!”

I turn around. Our leader came with us today. None of us know her name, we only call her Superior. She’s waving at me from the corner of a beige outcropping. I jog over.

“Yeah?”

She passes me another Halo. It’s the telecommunications device linked to the one I’d left in Kuromi’s dorm a week ago. I look up quizzically. Her oni mask gives nothing away. The deep green eyes behind them are flat, showing me no trace of what she’s thinking. She flicks her hair over her shoulder, presses the on button, and pulls up a security scan of Kuromi’s main door, where the camera is aimed. A girl is there, with red hair, looking nervous.

“Mai-chan?” she calls. She knocks again on the mahogany door, slightly ajar. Evidently, she has a key, meaning she’s a friend or a roommate. The -chan honorific means she knows Kuromi well and probably sees her often. From her appearance, she looks to be about the right age to be a classmate. From her texts and call history, I know Kuromi went to her friend Haruka’s house to help her fend off any loneliness. The girl with red hair is holding a bag with what looks to be a computer charger, so it’s probably Haruka back with a computer charger that she left at her house.

“Hiyamizu Haruka, a friend of hers, here to return her computer charger. She most likely left it at her house a while back. School started a week ago. She probably only returned to her apartment in Osaka this weekend, and found it then, so came back with it to give it to Kuromi.”

The girl places the bag on the counter, taps the Halo on the kitchen table and giggles, then moves back out the door and closes it behind her. I’m surprised Kuromi didn’t immediately throw the Halo out the window. Superior nods, apparently satisfied with my analysis, and deactivates the Halo, placing it back into her bag. “Continue watching her. If she does anything out of the ordinary, I want to hear about it.”

I nod, then hurry back to my area, turning on a camera we placed in the pool of her gym. She’s heading there now. The computer screen shows blue, and then she dives in.

My hair is in my face. In the time I take to put it up, something goes wrong.

Agata, a Rushing Water agent, gives a gasp of surprise. I glance at her screen, my arms still working to tie a ponytail. I see curious blue eyes and black hair tied back, a slim, heart-shaped face inspecting the camera. Kuromi gets in close for a better look, then the entire view changes and she’s lifting it out of the water. Liquid sluices off of the screen, her fingers coming into view. Then she gasps, and her face contorts into one of anger. She gives the lens the finger, then says something.

Agata starts scribbling furiously on a nearby piece of paper, lip-reading as she writes. I can’t see anything from where I am, but when she shows me the pad, I freeze.

_What do you want from me Sakamoto_

_I’ll answer your questions just fuck off and leave me alone_

_Stop with the cameras it’s really creepy_

I reach over and flick the switch on the pool camera. The screen goes dark. From the window, she climbs out of the pool and smashes the camera over and over again on the ground until it’s nothing but a pile of black scraps. Then she throws on her clothes, grabs her bag and storms out of the gym. Soon, she’s climbing into her black Audi and driving off with squealing tires.

I sigh and start packing up my surveillance gear. It’s going to be another long day.

-

Mai

How dare they? What right do they have to put _cameras_ around me? I park my car in the student lot and quickly check the interior. I find two more on the dashboard and window. Furiously, I throw them into the garbage. I am infinitely angry right now. People around me can probably sense my mood, so they duck around me when I start to the elevator. The entire car empties around me. I pluck another camera out of the top of the elevator and crush it under my foot. When I get to my room, I head straight for the “telecommunications device” on the table and chuck it out the window. Then I thoroughly scour my entire dorm for cameras for a good two hours, breaking them or throwing them out. When I’m certain I’m not being watched anymore, I flop onto my bed, exhausted. My phone vibrates on the blue duvet. It’s Kimiko, my roommate.

“Hey, what’s up, Ko-chan?”

Her voice is high-pitched, squealy with excitement. “Mai-chan! There’s a super cute guy downstairs. He’s asking for you!”

I freeze. Who could it possibly be except…

A surge of anger rises up inside of me, though I manage to fight it off long enough to reply. “Oh, yeah, I know who it is, I’ll be right down. Tell him to screw off. His name is Sakamoto Akitoshi, I think. He’s got weird white hair and purple eyes?”

She answers with a happy but confused yes, and then I hang up. Immediately I buckle to the urge to throw something and smash a small glass cat I got for two hundred yen a while back against the wall. It shatters into a million pieces that tumble onto the floor with a soft pitter-patter.

Finally, I get to my feet and trudge downstairs, ignoring the blatantly obvious cameras in the hallways. I’m so tired of this bullshit. I just want this all to be over. I’ll answer their questions, but it’s their own fault they didn’t approach me instead of stalking me. The elevator doors slide open with a ding and I immediately catch a glimpse of Sakamoto’s long trench coat and white ponytail. He’s turned away from me, with a small crowd of girls surrounding him, blushing eagerly. The second I step into the hall he whirls around. I want to punch him right in that stupid face.

His voice is smooth when he speaks. There’s no evidence that news of my earlier outburst at the gym had reached him, but I’m certain he knows.

“Kuromi-san, could we speak alone for a second.”

I glare at him, trying to push all of the hate I feel into one word. “Fine.” I force out through gritted teeth. “Let’s talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm far from satisfied with this chapter, and I'll probably delete it and rewrite it when I'm finished with the fic so that it better fits with the story. It is long, though. I wrote most of it on an airplane getting off a fever, and it's kind of funny how terrible it is, but I wanted to keep it for a week and post it just for fun. Don't take anything that happens seriously! The next chapter won't be up for a while, so this is kind of a fun interlude.


	6. What do I do, now that the play has stopped?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a long tattoo, excruciating in its beauty and swirling with blues and silvers and blacks curling around his back, reaching to his neck and curving to a gentle stop at his nape. It’s a snarling dragon, claws outstretched, furiously trying to escape a long chain wrapped tightly around its elegant body. At the end of the chain is a heavy lock, keeping its tail down. A shining key dangles just out of the dragon’s reach, its only beacon of hope snuffed by the distance. So close, yet so far. The image screams of despair and agony, desire and its persona, a light gone out, a flower wilted too soon.

By the time I get to the back gardens with Sakamoto in tow, I have managed to calm down a little, though the anger’s still roiling inside of me. Sakamoto’s eyes are slit, watching my every move like a violet snake waiting for the perfect chance to strike. Well, I’m not going to give it to him.

“You said you wanted to talk? Then talk. Ask me your damn questions. But right here, right now. You’ve got bugs everywhere. I don’t need to come with you to your damn cultist group.”

His eyes flash. I’ve struck a nerve. He doesn’t like my insulting his “anti-terrorism group”.

“We save lives every day. It’s not a cult.” The words are low, hissed, forced out through gritted teeth. His ponytail falls over his shoulder, a few white strands escaping and shadowing his face, hiding his upper features from view. His lips are pursed. His left hand is furiously pressing his index finger into a form it shouldn’t be in. That looks like it hurts. He doesn’t look like he cares.

“Yeah, sure. Reports to a higher superior? No clear goal in sight? Dedicated, almost obsessive members who are wholeheartedly devoted to a cause seemingly for the better of others? Creepy stalking of targets, hundreds of cameras placed around said target? It’s a cult, sorry.”

He takes a deep breath and shifts his head, slipping his ever-present long black trench coat off. Then he nudges up his tight-fitting, shoulder cut shirt. I almost blush. What the hell is he getting at? Why is he stripping? Then he turns around, lifting his hair away from his neck. I gasp.

There is a long tattoo, excruciating in its beauty and swirling with blues and silvers and blacks curling around his back, reaching to his neck and curving to a gentle stop at his nape. It’s a snarling dragon, claws outstretched, furiously trying to escape a long chain wrapped tightly around its elegant body. At the end of the chain is a heavy lock, keeping its tail down. A shining key dangles just out of the dragon’s reach, its only beacon of hope snuffed by the distance. So close, yet so far. The image screams of despair and agony, desire and its persona, a light gone out, a flower wilted too soon.

He turns back around and smiles ruefully at me, letting his shirt fall back down and putting his trench coat back on. His ponytail falls.

“My entire family died at the November 2015 Paris Attacks. I was twelve and the only one to survive. A Lithuanian man found me and took me back to his country with him. I lived with him for two months. One day, he told me he had a surprise for me. I thought I was getting adopted. I was so excited, I jumped right into his car. The whole way, he kept telling me I was going to be so happy. When we got there, there were a group of about twenty men waiting for me, all in white lab clothes. He sold me to them for 2500 litai, about 87,000 yen. They kept me for days, experimenting with different drugs and dyes. It’s why my eyes are purple. They thinned out so much from the medicine that my blood vessels started to show behind the iris. I don’t know what my original eye color was. I’m guessing blue. I don’t remember much from before those days.”

“They gave me a nickname. Dragon. It’s because I had a temper. I tried to fight back, but they chained me to a chair and dangled the key above me as a cruel joke. One of the scientists had an interest in body art, and wanted to see how a new ink he was making would work. But they liked making fun of me, so they hired a tattoo artist to draw me that dragon. She didn’t question why I was tied to a chair, why I was crying, why I tried to escape, why I called for help, why they kept telling her I was hallucinating, why I was underage. She just did what she was supposed to do, gave me a pitying look, took her money and left. And she took my last bits of hope with her.”

“When the police finally found me and the scientists, the story didn’t even make it to the newspapers. Because the doctors had money. They had influence. They were established surgeons, people who had conducted miracles in the past. A criminal record was sure to lose them their job, and then they wouldn’t be able to keep on saving people. That was their excuse, it didn’t work. At least on me. The police didn’t care about a random Parisian boy. They took their bribe, their lies, and they left.”

By this time, I don’t want to listen anymore. Sakamoto had nothing to do with me apart from the creepy stalking, I didn’t need his life story. I didn’t want his life story. But I can’t help but listen, entranced by the pain in his voice. That tattoo lingers in my memory.

“So I stole some money from their hideout, bought myself a phone and a ticket to Japan, and never looked back. I was thirteen when I found Rushing Water, and I’ve been with them ever since. There, I met people just like me, abandoned because of society’s greed for money, a placard, a fake hero to believe in. They gave me a name, a place in this world, a purpose. We have a common cause, you’re right. But it’s not a cult when that cause saves thousands of lives every single day.”

I narrow my eyes. Despite his anime character-level tragic backstory, I still don’t trust him. He could be making it up. But a part of me knows better. Knows that that calm pain in his eyes isn’t fake. I’ve seen it before, looking into the mirror. I guess I have something in common with this guy. Not that I’m going to tell him what happened to me. He can suck it up and go home.

“That doesn’t prove that it’s not a cult. Look, whatever. I don’t care if it’s a cult or not, but I just want you to ask me your questions and then leave me and everyone I know alone, okay? You can do your anti-terrorism agonized hero thing on your own, far away from me. I don’t want or need your organization, and I don’t think your organization can gain much from me.”

He takes a step forward. I take a step back. He takes two steps forward. I try to back up, but I hit a wall, the scratchy leaves of the rose gardens the junior boarders planted at the beginning of the year. At the time, I thought the pink blooms gorgeous. Now I have never hated these beautiful flowers more.

He moves forwards again. My back digs into the bristly thorns. My knees hit an obstacle, the stone bench in front of the flowers. The momentum forces me down, making me fall brusquely onto the cold marble. He leans over me. His breath is warm as he whispers unfamiliar words, either French or Lithuanian I cannot tell. The European language washes over me, and for a second I can understand him.

_Farewell, my sweet summer flower, I will meet you when the moon is high in the sky._

Then he moves off, just like last time in my apartment, and the movement of the fabric on his coat is so painfully familiar I can’t help it. I want my answers, to the questions I never asked, am not brave enough to ask, but I know that he knows. He knows everything I want to know, and yet he does not tell me, maybe because of some twisted rule, maybe because he will not, or cannot, but he knows. And soon, so will I, if I don’t get him get away this time.

“Wait!”

My voice is frantic, shrill, confused as it rings out in the quiet afternoon air. My legs stiffen and I shoot to my feet suddenly, leaving the comfort of the stone bench. The shadow of the old dorm building’s wall passes by, bathing us in a beautiful golden light. Ivy curls up the aged stone walls beside me. His feet move slowly, to turn him around. When he faces me, his violet eyes pierce through the shadow wreathing his face. His ponytail swings in the breeze. A shower of rose petals blow off of the bushes and swirl around him. The black fabric of his coat flutters, giving the illusion of wings feathering out. In this moment, he looks like an angel.

His lips curl into a sad smile. He speaks lowly. Once again, his accent disappears into thin air.

“Yes?”

I can’t bring myself to answer. Except…

“You have petals in your hair.”

My voice is hoarse, croaky with emotion. He startles, reaches up, runs a hand through his white locks. His fingers get stuck at his black hair tie. When he pulls away, a small imperfection graces his smooth ponytail. The petals scatter at his feet, falling down gently.

“Goodbye, Mai-chan.”

Then he rounds the corner and he’s gone. My knees buckle under me. The grass is warm against the bare skin exposed by my shorts. I stay there, kneeling for how long I don’t know. When I finally rise again, the late day glow has moved from where I am to the front entrance of the back gardens. There is a piece of paper stuck in the wall climber plants there. I slowly move over on feet that cannot comprehend what my brain is telling them to do. I don’t know why I’m so emotional over something as small as petals in Sakamoto’s hair. Today has been exhausting, the highs so high and the lows so low. The influx of _feelings_ I’ve experienced in such a short amount of time is disorienting and terrifying.

I pull the paper off the wall. It’s just a scrap and I let it loose in the breeze. It flies away, spiraling in the wind, until I can’t see it anymore.

Violet eyes burn in my mind. Intense anger, pain, sadness, irony, fear.

What am I doing to you?


	7. Tickets For Next Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't know anyone named Raphael Caron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mai goes to Paris! A bit more of Sakamoto's backstory is revealed, and a larger time skip this time. A couple years.

Sometimes, at night, I dream of that day in the gardens. They’re no more than flashes of afternoon sun and violet eyes, sometimes a swish of white-blond hair. A couple rose petals. Occasionally his tattoo burns its way into the back of my eyelids. But Sakamoto never comes to bother me again. Rushing Water seems to have calmed down, if it even exists. I never do find any more cameras.

I did some research. Found some large, thick books listing the deaths in the 2015 Paris Attacks. There aren’t many pictures, but there’s one for at least every family.

Raphael, Antoinette, Claudette and Alexandre Caron. There’s a picture of a tall woman with flowing light hair and a man with bright blue eyes. Standing beside them is a boy that barely reaches his mother’s chest. She would never get to see him grow to be taller than her. He has a sister, four years older than him. I wonder if she made it out too.

The boy already has semi-long hair. It brushes against his shoulders and gives him an innocent look.

Sakamoto Akitoshi is Raphael Caron. The resemblance is unmistakable.

A French boy who lost everything. Not just his parents, but himself.

I comb French websites, enroll in a course online, and devour article after magazine after school admissions folder for any mention of his name. I have no idea why. Perhaps I pity him. He was enrolled in _L’Institut de Justice P_ _énale pour les Enfants,_ or the Institution of Criminal Justice for Children, studying to become a detective. He had twenty-three other classmates, most of whom are in top-notch detective universities by now. I had no idea that criminal justice academies existed for those below high school. He was eight when he started!

I manage to get in contact with his homeroom teacher, Alina Perell and send her a plethora of emails in awkward French. She replies in graceful, if a bit chunky English, singing praises about Raphael’s natural knack for figuring out liars. Apparently, everybody thought he’d died. His sister and parents were buried, but they never found his body. I want to tell her everything, but what good could his teacher do? She would only think I was crazy. She ends her email with a gentle _how do you know Raphael?_ I never reply. I delete everything. Because I don’t know him. I’ve never met a Raphael Caron. I met a Sakamoto Akitoshi, a member of a Japanese anti-terrorism group, who’s been through torture and violation and pain that he never deserved. There’s no trace of the happy, clever boy Madam Perell describes. There’s only someone who knows too much, who’s a thousand years older than he should be, who’s grown up too fast, and despite being well older than he _was_ , has experienced loads less happiness than he should. There’s only a boy who has no childhood.

I look at my 98% grade on my final semester foreign languages class. I took French, unsurprisingly, and dropped German. English was a must, but I gave up my dreams of traveling to Berlin or Munich or Frankfurt. The only place I want to go is Paris. I want answers.

Now years older and armed with an “exchange program” excuse, I’m sitting on a cramped airplane seat. Even if this whole France, Raphael Caron, Sakamoto Akitoshi thing is a total waste of time and money, I’m still earning college credits because of it. The blonde woman sitting next to me bears a remarkable resemblance to Claudette Caron, his mother. I see them everywhere I go, a family who’s left a broken, scared boy behind. And even though I know they didn’t _want_ to die, I still resent them a bit.

She smiles at me and titters something in high pitched French. I whisper something back. My tone makes it clear I’m tired. She apologizes, but frowns. She asked me if I was vacationing. I said no. But my accent and distinctly Asian appearance makes it obvious I’m not a native. So what could I be doing there? Business? Unable to sate her curiosity, she waits a bit then asks me if I am there for school or work. I say no, with a little more finality this time. She huffs and settles back in her seat. The girl next to her, presumably her daughter, nudges her and says “ _Maman, maman. J’ais soif.”_

She’s thirsty. Her mother makes a huge deal of getting her “special giraffe patterned sippy cup with nice, refreshing cherry juice in it.” She sucks on the green tip happily and leans back into the stuffy blue seat.

I almost stare. Because the girl has long white hair and bright blue eyes, like Raphael would have had. I turn back around.

“ _Excusez-moi, savez-vous une Claudette Caron?”_ Do you know one Claudette Caron?

She blinks, clearly surprised by my outwardly display of socialization. “ _Non, je suis Annabelle Berger.”_ No, my name is Annabelle Berger.

I sit back, disappointed. “ _Oh, je suis desolé.”_ I’m sorry. She smiles and waves it off. She’s not Claudette. She’s Annabelle Berger. I thought for a second… she could be an aunt, a cousin, someone with Caron heritage.

Too much wistful thinking.

I close my eyes and jump into tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raphael Caron is based after a real person who died during the Paris Attacks.   
> A bit of a shorter chapter this time.


	8. Arrival and Discretion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s never easy to study in a foreign country, no matter how well-versed you are in the language. French culture and their way of life always seems to elude me. How they can be so outgoing, so friendly, so blatantly refusing of personal boundaries is a mystery to me, the Japanese girl who grew up in a strictly formal environment with my back straight and head held high.

Paris is refreshing. I have a quaint little apartment, about a ten-minute walk from the school, with a fun roommate named Marie who’s more than happy to leave me to my own devices. The view is nice, everyone is friendly, and the atmosphere is not nearly as stifling as it was in Japan. _Nihon bumon,_ _日本部門_ was a pressuring environment where you were either the best or the worst, and grades, popularity, and social standings were everything. But Paris is all warm baguettes and fresh coffee in the morning, long strolls down the _Avenue de Champs-Elysees_ in the evenings, and meeting friends by the _Seine_ on _Pont Neuf_. Also, the sushi is exquisite. I only have six months in Paris, and then by the program of the exchange I’ll be in Milan for another two months before going back to Japan to finish my final bit of college.

My daily route to school takes me past Le Carillon, a friendly café-bar. It also happens to be the place where the Carons died. So when I stop by for a coffee if I’m running late, I’m forced to stare into the white marble plaque and the _Antoinette Caron, Alexandre Caron, Claudette Caron, Raphael Caron_ carved delicately into the stone. People regularly stop by and pay their respects. I buy a small sachet of sakura flowers and plant them in a pot. They bloom into beautiful pink blossoms, curling happily into the French sun. Every Monday I snip off one or two and lay them against the marble plaque, if only to say hello.

It’s never easy to study in a foreign country, no matter how well-versed you are in the language. French culture and their way of life always seems to elude me. How they can be so outgoing, so friendly, so blatantly refusing of personal boundaries is a mystery to me, the Japanese girl who grew up in a strictly formal environment with my back straight and head held high. It was always a matter of how polite you were. But in Paris, hanging out with friends means sitting outside at a nearby bar and gossiping about a passing woman’s dress or greeting random strangers in random languages, not worrying if you sounded absolutely ridiculous.

I have possibly thirteen cards for the _Galeries Lafayette_. I might be screwed.

But Paris is nice. It’s great, in fact, since my apartment has a great view out the window, I can rise early in the morning, have a cup of coffee, and just watch the world go by. _L’Institut de Justice Pénale pour les Enfants_ is just a short walk away. It has a massive campus. Every day I can see children happily bouncing into the academy, not knowing one of their unwilling alumni wasn’t dead.

I toss my hair gently over my shoulder and blink a little. French and Japanese swirl together in front of my vision. My head hurts. I put my mug aside and squint at my laptop screen. I’m halfway done my monthly bilingual essay. This time, the topic is the benefits and disadvantages of dictatorship. It’s hard to come up with more than six benefits, but go off, I guess.

It’s 11:27 pm. The Parisian skyline is softly glowing, just like Kyoto’s did two years ago. I shake my head a little. Stop thinking about the fires. It’s 2021, get a hold of yourself. The pink sofa is comfortable. I have multiple blankets thrown over me, to ward off the chill of a Northern French winter. Hot chocolate in a mug is steaming gently. Marie provides a soothing white noise in the background, chittering away in her room with one of her friends.

The Kyoto Attacks were a terrorist movement. One funded by Al-Shabaab. Hundreds died. Maybe thousands. I’d never thought to check. All that mattered to me at the time was Tatsuya. Even Marie, who I’m very close with, would never dare mention him, or my old life in Japan to me. She must think I came to France for a fresh start, away from the death and destruction they’re still trying to cover up in my home city. Last time I called my mother, she was taking a stroll in a park. Said something about it still smelling like smoke. Videos on the Internet depict shambling ruins, bright orange cranes and construction crews working day and night. The entire nation is still reeling. Kyoto is a huge city. Who knows? Maybe Tokyo, or Yokohama might be next. It’s not even the most densely populated. Osaka? Nagoya? Kobe? Sapporo? Fukuoka, where my extended family live?

At least Tokyo 2020 persisted. Naturally, the number of visitors diminished, but races went on and hardcore fans still went. Gradually, Japan returned to its former routine. Sushi, karaoke, cake and Dance-Dance Revolution, anime (a lot of anime) and karate were still what Japan was known for, not the Kyoto Attacks. I go out for ramen with the gang whenever I find the time to visit Japan. Everything is fine. I’m seeing a mandatory therapist for anxiety and minor schizophrenia. I don’t know why. The voices inside my head aren’t…malicious or anything. I just don’t feel completely in control of myself at times.

My therapist’s name is Victor. He’s nice, but I sometimes feel like he just sits there and nods while I talk in a quiet voice about how my day has been. He sometimes asks me questions about what my crazy head voices say. I never give him more than a couple sentences and he never pushes. Most of the time we just sit in silence, him writing gently on his clipboard, me picking at my nails or sipping at a coffee. On good days we can strike up a conversation. His mother was from Zimbabwe and he lived there for a while, so he has a smooth accent and sometimes slips into Xhosa when he’s talking to himself. It’s relaxing, a soft, gentle language with occasional clicks. I tried to learn a couple phrases and ended up sounding like a chicken being plucked.

I have a nice job at a nearby private school as an Assistant Teacher-in-Training. The teacher I work under is named Madame Pella, and she teaches English and foreign languages. I teach a course in Japanese every Monday and Wednesday, 3 to 5 in her classroom. The pay is nice, and the students are middle school, so I don’t have to deal with the minds of children under twelve. They’re mature enough to know when they shouldn’t rile me up, when they have a little more leeway, when they should shut up and just do their work because I’m having a bad day and if they don’t, I will explode.

Every night, when I lie down and can’t sleep and miss Japan, my old life, everything I thought was normal so much I might burst, I close my eyes and breathe deeply, and imagine myself with white-blonde hair in a high ponytail and soft violet eyes, in a sharp black trench coat and tight navy sleeveless shirt, and something on my back might hurt a little, in a predetermined pattern suspiciously like a dragon, and I can look at my ceiling and breathe again.

Even if I know it’s fake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait!


End file.
